Currently, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) provides a low-cost, powerful interface to the telephone network. For a voice signal to travel over the Internet, a device is required that can convert analog voice signals to packets and vice versa, such as an Internet access device (“IAD”), a media gateway or similar device. IADs and media gateways have similar functions, to convert between analog and packet signals, although the term “media gateway” is often used for larger systems that reside in switching centers and the term “IAD” for smaller systems in residences and small businesses. While their features may differ in some instances, we consider them as equivalent.
In a typical VoIP configuration, an analog telephone is plugged into the IAD and the IAD is plugged into a router, a modem, or some other Internet connection. The IAD is registered with a softswitch (a type of gatekeeper) using SIP (session initiation protocol) or H.323 that provides registration, address translation, and call authorization. When a user picks up the telephone handset (i.e., goes off-hook) and dials a telephone number, the softswitch receives the digit string and determines the location of the call destination. The destination may be an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) server, a speech server (a type of IVR server that includes speech recognition and/or text-to-speech synthesis capabilities), another IAD, a VoIP phone, or another communication device. Once the softswitch determines the call destination, it sets up a connection from the originating IAD to the destination and the call may proceed. When the originating user speaks, the voice signal is digitized and converted to packets by the IAD, then sent over the Internet to the destination. If the destination is a typical telephone or some other analog system such as a TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) IVR server, the packets are transmitted to an IAD or gateway to convert the packets to an analog audio signal, which in turn is transmitted to the telephone or analog system.
If a user wishes to access an advanced service that provides speech control for VoIP, the user must currently dial a telephone number corresponding to the speech server. An alternative would be to connect the user to the speech server immediately when the user goes off-hook. This “hotline” or “ringdown” function requires that the IAD be programmed with the predetermined telephone number or network address. Such a predetermined telephone number, network address, or any other set of characters that specifies the speech server location is referred to herein as a “hotline address.” The drawback of this prior art preprogramming of the IAD is that there are many circumstances where the hotline address is either unknown in advance or must be changed after the IAD has been shipped and installed. For example, it may be inconvenient or costly to configure the IAD before shipping. Also for example, where there are several speech servers available, the service provider may desire to route the user's call to a different server to balance traffic loads, to offer a different set of features or a specific language, or to route calls away from failed equipment. In addition, similar prior art difficulties apply for other configuration fields in the IAD, and on the network side of the speech service (a service provided by one or more servers, one of which is a speech server).
Prior art user-configuration also suffers from various difficulties. While some IADs are user-configurable, such configuration by the user is inconvenient and may be beyond the abilities of some users. Also, it is not always desirable to reveal configuration information such as the IAD login password and the hotline number to the user. In addition, as mentioned above, after initial configuration, a service provider may want to subsequently and dynamically alter a current configuration, such as for load balancing or provision of additional features.
As a consequence, a need remains for a method and system to dynamically, automatically and remotely configure an IAD for speech recognition capabilities, such as smart dial tone. Such a system and method should be able to initially provide, remotely, the hotline address and other IAD configuration data in the IAD for a speech server, after the IAD is shipped and installed, and with little or no user intervention. In addition, such a system and method should also be operative to dynamically, automatically and remotely alter or modify such IAD configurations for the provision of various speech service capabilities and features, such as speech recognition and various forms of smart dial tone.